Download Case Study in research in Applied Linguistics

Zuraidah Mohd Don
 Applied
Linguistics is now so fragmented in
its range of interests that one can no longer
rely on a common basis of shared
assumptions between people who are called
‘Applied Linguists’ (Meara, 1989, p. 13)
 aims
to solve ‘real-world’ problems
in which language is a central issue
 research
touches on a particularly
wide range of issues
 interdisciplinary in nature,
synthesising research from a variety
of disciplines, including linguistics
encourages
enquiry
into the relationship
between theory and
practice
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Adult Language Learning
Child Language
Communication in the Professions
Contrastive Linguistics and Error Analysis
Discourse Analysis
Educational Technology and Learning
Foreign language Teaching Methodology and Teacher education
Forensic Linguistics
Immersion Education
Language and Ecology
Language and Education in Multilingual Settings
Language and Gender
Language Contact and Language Change
Language for Special Purposes
Language Planning
Learner Autonomy in Language Learning
Lexicography and Lexicology
Literacy
Mother Tongue Education
Psycholinguistics
Rhetoric and Stylistics
Second Language Acquisition
Sign Language
AL
provides the theoretical and
descriptive foundations for the
investigation and solution of
language-related problems:
 language education
 linguistics
 Language-related concerns
disciplines
in other
Language
teaching has evolved its
own theoretical and empirical
foundations
A growing influence of psychologybased approaches
The scientific study of such areas as
TESOL, TEFL, TESL, language
teaching and learning
 Theoretical
linguistics studies language as a
phenomenon in its own right, independent of
any social or other real world context
 Applied
linguistics takes into account the
wider context in which the language is used
A
recent approach - a
discursive/interactional approach to the
study of politeness
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Analysing data at the level of discourse
Taking into account the socio-cultural values of a
particular society
(see e.g. Eelen, 2001; Mills 2003, 2009; Haugh,
2007; Bravo 2008; Locher and Watts 2005).
 Politeness
is seen as a social interaction
which does not always equate with face
threat mitigating strategies (Locher &Watts,
2005) and is "conditioned by socio-cultural
norms of a particular society" (FelixBrasdefer, 2006); and “community of
practice” (Wenger, 1998).
 Politeness
is taken as only one aspect of
facework, which itself is part of ‘relational
work’
 “There
is no faceless communication”
(Terkourafi (2007)
 Face
is taken as a broad notion, overlaying
and underlying every kind of interpersonal
communication one of whose components is
politeness (Locher & Watts, 2005).
 Clinical
linguistics
 Forensic linguistics
 Computational linguistics and speech
engineering
 Speech perception
 Language evolution
 Critical
vs non critical approaches
 Mediated
vs face-to-face interaction
 Small
sample of texts vs corpus data
 Micro
vs Macro levels of analysis
 The
‘medium turn’
 The ‘discourse turn’
 The critical turn
 Critical’
is typically used to describe works
‘taking a basically critical or radical
stance on contemporary society, with an
orientation toward investigating,
exploiting, repression, social injustice.
asymmetrical power relations (generated
from class, gender, or position), distorted
communication, and misrecognition of
interest’ (Deertz, 2005, p. 86)
 Critical researchers examine how
significant social issues are constructed in
discourse by powerful agencies
Not restricted to one particular analytical
approach
 Methodologically eclectic, choosing methods as a
function of their relevance to the realisation of
social political goals (Van Dijk, 1995)
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Fairclough’s approach (1989)
Argumentation strategies (Wodak and Matouschek,
1993)
 Narrative analysis (Mumby, 1993)
 CA (Ehrlich, 1998)
 Social actor theory (van Leeuwen, in Renkema, 2009)
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Engaging with Critical social theorists (e.g.
Foucault, Habermas, Bernstein, Derrida, Harvey
and Giddens)
 The
medium turn: Research focuses on the
communication medium
 The discourse turn: Investigating the
relationship between medium, context,
culture, identity and power
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Broadening the concept of context and
approaching MCB as a discursive space where
medium, physical context and users shape and
are shaped by the reality of the workplace
(Turner, et al , 2006)
 The
critical turn: revealing more complex
realities in relation to question of power and
identity
 Taking
a broader perspective on discourse,
focusing on the impact of CMC on business
discourse
 Akar (2000) adopted a multi-layered analysis
(Harris and Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003) to show
how the use of the new media mirrors the
tension between local and global cultures in
Turkey:
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Macro-level
Meso-level
Micro-level
Researching
identity and power
and how related aspects are
enacted and resisted through
discourses in institutional
settings
 Extensively
researched, especially in
connection with dominance and inequality
A
lack of study on power and domination and
inequality in mediated business discourse
 Corpus
data: written or spoken
 Transcripts of interviews with practitioners
 Questionnaire
 Multimodal
texts
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Communication has become multimodal
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there is a need to become multimodal in
our analysis
A shift from the dominance of the mode of
writing to the mode of image
Monomodal or linguistic analysis will miss
much of how text creates meaning
 Visual
social semiotic method developed
by Kress and van Leeuwen (2001)
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The framework allows us to interpret ‘what is in’
the image, i.e. its meaning
 Meaning
is encoded in the structures of
images
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An image is not looked at in isolation, but as it
appears as part of a composition
 The
problem is we cannot generalise from
small amounts of data
 We need to use corpus techniques to compile
and analyse very large data sets
 corpus-based
discourse analyses (e.g. Baker, 2006;
Upton, 2009)
 recent sociolinguistic research (e.g.,Holmes &
Schnurr, 2005; Baker, 2010)
 studies in critical discourse analysis (Fairclough,
2000; Barker & Galasiński, 2001, p. 26; : Orpin,
2005; Mautner, 2008; Zuraidah Mohd Don et al,
2010)
 Applied
linguistics is no longer just ELT
 It continues to expand as new subjects get
involved in the study of language
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And existing areas are approached from a new
perspective, e.g. a critical perspective
 New
technologies open up new media and
new opportunities for applied research
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And open up new opportunities for data analysis
 Duff,
P. A. (2008). Case Study in research in
Applied Linguistics. New York: Routledge.
 Seidlhofer, B. (2003). Controversies in
Applied Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford
University Press